Last Tuesday it snowed, and the weather has been cold enough since then that there’s still some of it around.  Yesterday I went to my parents’ house before a birthday brunch for my brother-in-law.

Why do these things matter?  Timing.  Because today’s assignment is this:

My answer is that it depends on what sort of snow riding experience you desire.  Sleds are more the SUVs of the snow world, good for going in straight lines and especially useful if you’re likely to be in a crash.  Saucers and their cousin the tube are like a Ferrari you drive while blindfolded.  You’re going to go faster, but there is zero chance you’ll have any control during a single point of the ride.

Let niece Mady and I demonstrate a tube ride from Thanksgiving:

As a kid, my first sledding location was this spot in my parents’ front yard:

The first trip down was not that fun, but once that track was cut we would dive into the sleds and have a quick, exciting trip to the bottom where the ditch kindly prevented us from flying into the road.  The only problem with this location was the relatively short run.

The solution?  Across the street there are two houses with fenced-in backyards with a very convenient gap of about 10 feet in between the fences.  There was someone I don’t know standing next to their car when I was there yesterday, so enjoy this Google Streetview image of the site:

A saucer trip here was incredible with how fast you can go, and yet the chance of slamming into the fence was roughly 2,000 percent.  Sleds were ideal.  A bunch of kids from the neighborhood would converge here and all at once we would set out down the hill, some of us riding tandem, others diving in to gain speed after a first group had gone ahead.  Bonus points if you could start on the driveway, dive into the sled and make it between the fences without going face-first into the corner on the left.  The result was basically a Nascar race with bumping and crashes and someone emerging at the bottom in snowy glory.

There were no major injuries (that I know of).  Though at one point a similar mass sledding race took place inside the yard on the right, and after my older brother crashed one of the other kids flew over a bump riding a quasi snowboard and landed on my brother’s face.  He walked home with a cut on his lip and a chunk of green snowboard plastic in his teeth.

The snowboard itself has a mark on the bottom where that happened.  I would have a picture of that for you, but I just remembered that part now, and the snowboard is in the attic in my parents’ garage.  You’ll just have to use your imagination on this one.